Edward Scissorhands
1990
Tim Burton
Did you know anyone in high school with a Tim Burton aesthetic? I knew a few (though maybe they were more Nightmare Before Christmas Chic than Scissorhands Swank). Pale, wore all black, and so on. The film nerd version of emo, basically. Everyone feels like they don't "fit in" at some point during those four high school years, but it really just comes down to how you express it. To those who expressed it through an adoration of the Edward Scissorhands character, and say to you now—I get it.
It was pretty clear from the moment Edward said "I am incomplete" that this was an allegory. Here was a boy who grew up on the outskirts of a monotonous suburbia (those bright pastels ain't fooling anyone), but who felt like he just didn't have a place in that society. His flaw (scissors instead of hands) made him feel like he could never assimilate, even if he wanted to. During a brief spell, that flaw was seen as "special," before inevitably exposed as just another reason for a callous society to turn on its own. Even with the best intentions, Edward is crucified by the normies for the crime of being different.
Edward Scissorhands takes what many teenagers felt in high school ("I don't belong") and made it literal—"How can I belong if I have scissors instead of hands?" The film confirmed for many teens what they already knew, deep down inside.
Obviously, it gets better. You eventually realize that being different is ultimately a good thing, and assimilation is the thing you want to avoid. But you can't blame teenagers for not being able to see the forest around the trees. You can't blame Edward either, who was murdered before he got the chance.
Which makes this movie sound brutal! But it's really not. It's fanciful and occasionally wholesome. It's a fucking Tim Burton movie! The man is (was?) a genius at making these child-like themes seem more adult than they actually are. They are "edgy" but ultimately for children (teenagers are children, a fact that is easier to see now that it's been a decade and a half since I've been one). This isn't a bad thing! But you can see why such a movie would make me reflect on years past than make me reflect on my current lot in life.
Again, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. I liked spending 100 minutes in this world. I could give or take the whole Tim Burton whimsical gothic steampunk thing that he always does, but at least here it had a purpose—to juxtapose with the prim and proper straightedge suburban tedium down the hill from Edward's mansion.
And I really liked how it was just accepted as fact that this kid didn't have hands, and instead had scissors at the end of his arms. People were questioning whether he was fit for society, but, like, no one was questioning the logistics of having scissors for hands, if that makes sense. When Joyce finds Edward abandoned in his mansion, she just... takes him home. The scissors are excepted as fact. I like when the characters buy into the movie magic.
It kind of reminded me of Coneheads, in that way. Like Edward, the Coneheads were characters who looked different, but society kind of just accepted their appearances, or at least didn't comment on them. I dunno, maybe that's a stretch. Plus, I feel dirty making the comparison, because Coneheads just used this tension to make cheap SNL jokes that I fucking hate, and Edward Scissorhands used the tension to tell a cohesive and occasionally moving story.
The movie I should be comparing Edward Scissorhands to is Luca. The money line in Luca goes: "Some people won't accept him, but some people will, and he seems to know how to find the good ones." Luca and Alberto don't fit into regular society either, being sea monsters and all. But they were able to find friendships anyway. Edward does the same thing (though in a more passive way). Many people don't accept him, but some people do—Winona Ryder, mostly. For Edward, unfortunately, it's not enough.
I'm thankful that we all eventually get past our teenage years. For those who felt a kinship with Edward Scissorhands, I assume that most got past those years and realized that it's pretty rare that we'd meet the same fate as Edward, that what we might perceive as "flaws" in ourselves will eventually circle back to making us special. So I guess this is a sad movie! But then, isn't that what makes it so appealing to a certain type of teenager in the first place?
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: Another long romantic drama with The English Patient. Hopefully it doesn't take me as long to get through it as it did Doctor Zhivago.
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